Delphi Complete Works of Lucretius

by Titus Lucretius Carus

  Besides all this,

  If there had been no origin-in-birth

  Of lands and sky, and they had ever been

  The everlasting, why, ere Theban war

  And obsequies of Troy, have other bards

  Not also chanted other high affairs?

  Whither have sunk so oft so many deeds

  Of heroes? Why do those deeds live no more,

  Ingrafted in eternal monuments

  Of glory? Verily, I guess, because

  The Sum is new, and of a recent date

  The nature of our universe, and had

  Not long ago its own exordium.

  Wherefore, even now some arts are being still

  Refined, still increased: now unto ships

  Is being added many a new device;

  And but the other day musician-folk

  Gave birth to melic sounds of organing;

  And, then, this nature, this account of things

  Hath been discovered latterly, and I

  Myself have been discovered only now,

  As first among the first, able to turn

  The same into ancestral Roman speech.

  Yet if, percase, thou deemest that ere this

  Existed all things even the same, but that

  Perished the cycles of the human race

  In fiery exhalations, or cities fell

  By some tremendous quaking of the world,

  Or rivers in fury, after constant rains,

  Had plunged forth across the lands of earth

  And whelmed the towns — then, all the more must thou

  Confess, defeated by the argument,

  That there shall be annihilation too

  Of lands and sky. For at a time when things

  Were being taxed by maladies so great,

  And so great perils, if some cause more fell

  Had then assailed them, far and wide they would

  Have gone to disaster and supreme collapse.

  And by no other reasoning are we

  Seen to be mortal, save that all of us

  Sicken in turn with those same maladies

  With which have sickened in the past those men

  Whom nature hath removed from life.

  gain,

  Whatever abides eternal must indeed

  Either repel all strokes, because ’tis made

  Of solid body, and permit no entrance

  Of aught with power to sunder from within

  The parts compact — as are those seeds of stuff

  Whose nature we’ve exhibited before;

  Or else be able to endure through time

  For this: because they are from blows exempt,

  As is the void, the which abides untouched,

  Unsmit by any stroke; or else because

  There is no room around, whereto things can,

  As ‘twere, depart in dissolution all, —

  Even as the sum of sums eternal is,

  Without or place beyond whereto things may

  Asunder fly, or bodies which can smite,

  And thus dissolve them by the blows of might.

  But not of solid body, as I’ve shown,

  Exists the nature of the world, because

  In things is intermingled there a void;

  Nor is the world yet as the void, nor are,

  Moreover, bodies lacking which, percase,

  Rising from out the infinite, can fell

  With fury-whirlwinds all this sum of things,

  Or bring upon them other cataclysm

  Of peril strange; and yonder, too, abides

  The infinite space and the profound abyss —

  Whereinto, lo, the ramparts of the world

  Can yet be shivered. Or some other power

  Can pound upon them till they perish all.

  Thus is the door of doom, O nowise barred

  Against the sky, against the sun and earth

  And deep-sea waters, but wide open stands

  And gloats upon them, monstrous and agape.

  Wherefore, again, ’tis needful to confess

  That these same things are born in time; for things

  Which are of mortal body could indeed

  Never from infinite past until to-day

  Have spurned the multitudinous assaults

  Of the immeasurable aeons old.

  Again, since battle so fiercely one with other

  The four most mighty members the world,

  Aroused in an all unholy war,

  Seest not that there may be for them an end

  Of the long strife? — Or when the skiey sun

  And all the heat have won dominion o’er

  The sucked-up waters all? — And this they try

  Still to accomplish, though as yet they fail, —

  For so aboundingly the streams supply

  New store of waters that ’tis rather they

  Who menace the world with inundations vast

  From forth the unplumbed chasms of the sea.

  But vain — since winds (that over-sweep amain)

  And skiey sun (that with his rays dissolves)

  Do minish the level seas and trust their power

  To dry up all, before the waters can

  Arrive at the end of their endeavouring.

  Breathing such vasty warfare, they contend

  In balanced strife the one with other still

  Concerning mighty issues, — though indeed

  The fire was once the more victorious,

  And once — as goes the tale — the water won

  A kingdom in the fields. For fire o’ermastered

  And licked up many things and burnt away,

  What time the impetuous horses of the Sun

  Snatched Phaethon headlong from his skiey road

  Down the whole ether and over all the lands.

  But the omnipotent Father in keen wrath

  Then with the sudden smite of thunderbolt

  Did hurl the mighty-minded hero off

  Those horses to the earth. And Sol, his sire,

  Meeting him as he fell, caught up in hand

  The ever-blazing lampion of the world,

  And drave together the pell-mell horses there

  And yoked them all a-tremble, and amain,

  Steering them over along their own old road,

  Restored the cosmos, — as forsooth we hear

  From songs of ancient poets of the Greeks —

  A tale too far away from truth, meseems.

  For fire can win when from the infinite

  Has risen a larger throng of particles

  Of fiery stuff; and then its powers succumb,

  Somehow subdued again, or else at last

  It shrivels in torrid atmospheres the world.

  And whilom water too began to win —

  As goes the story — when it overwhelmed

  The lives of men with billows; and thereafter,

  When all that force of water-stuff which forth

  From out the infinite had risen up

  Did now retire, as somehow turned aside,

  The rain-storms stopped, and streams their fury checked.

  FORMATION OF THE WORLD AND

  ASTRONOMICAL QUESTIONS

  But in what modes that conflux of first-stuff

  Did found the multitudinous universe

  Of earth, and sky, and the unfathomed deeps

  Of ocean, and courses of the sun and moon,

  I’ll now in order tell. For of a truth

  Neither by counsel did the primal germs

  ‘Stablish themselves, as by keen act of mind,

  Each in its proper place; nor did they make,

  Forsooth, a compact how each germ should move;

  But, lo, because primordials of things,

  Many in many modes, astir by blows

  From immemorial aeons, in motion too

  By their own weights, have evermore been wont

  To be so borne along and in all m
odes

  To meet together and to try all sorts

  Which, by combining one with other, they

  Are powerful to create: because of this

  It comes to pass that those primordials,

  Diffused far and wide through mighty aeons,

  The while they unions try, and motions too,

  Of every kind, meet at the last amain,

  And so become oft the commencements fit

  Of mighty things — earth, sea, and sky, and race

  Of living creatures.

  In that long-ago

  The wheel of the sun could nowhere be discerned

  Flying far up with its abounding blaze,

  Nor constellations of the mighty world,

  Nor ocean, nor heaven, nor even earth nor air.

  Nor aught of things like unto things of ours

  Could then be seen — but only some strange storm

  And a prodigious hurly-burly mass

  Compounded of all kinds of primal germs,

  Whose battling discords in disorder kept

  Interstices, and paths, coherencies,

  And weights, and blows, encounterings, and motions,

  Because, by reason of their forms unlike

  And varied shapes, they could not all thuswise

  Remain conjoined nor harmoniously

  Have interplay of movements. But from there

  Portions began to fly asunder, and like

  With like to join, and to block out a world,

  And to divide its members and dispose

  Its mightier parts — that is, to set secure

  The lofty heavens from the lands, and cause

  The sea to spread with waters separate,

  And fires of ether separate and pure

  Likewise to congregate apart.

  For, lo,

  First came together the earthy particles

  (As being heavy and intertangled) there

  In the mid-region, and all began to take

  The lowest abodes; and ever the more they got

  One with another intertangled, the more

  They pressed from out their mass those particles

  Which were to form the sea, the stars, the sun,

  And moon, and ramparts of the mighty world —

  For these consist of seeds more smooth and round

  And of much smaller elements than earth.

  And thus it was that ether, fraught with fire,

  First broke away from out the earthen parts,

  Athrough the innumerable pores of earth,

  And raised itself aloft, and with itself

  Bore lightly off the many starry fires;

  And not far otherwise we often see

  And the still lakes and the perennial streams

  Exhale a mist, and even as earth herself

  Is seen at times to smoke, when first at dawn

  The light of the sun, the many-rayed, begins

  To redden into gold, over the grass

  Begemmed with dew. When all of these are brought

  Together overhead, the clouds on high

  With now concreted body weave a cover

  Beneath the heavens. And thuswise ether too,

  Light and diffusive, with concreted body

  On all sides spread, on all sides bent itself

  Into a dome, and, far and wide diffused

  On unto every region on all sides,

  Thus hedged all else within its greedy clasp.

  Hard upon ether came the origins

  Of sun and moon, whose globes revolve in air

  Midway between the earth and mightiest ether, —

  For neither took them, since they weighed too little

  To sink and settle, but too much to glide

  Along the upmost shores; and yet they are

  In such a wise midway between the twain

  As ever to whirl their living bodies round,

  And ever to dure as parts of the wide Whole;

  In the same fashion as certain members may

  In us remain at rest, whilst others move.

  When, then, these substances had been withdrawn,

  Amain the earth, where now extend the vast

  Cerulean zones of all the level seas,

  Caved in, and down along the hollows poured

  The whirlpools of her brine; and day by day

  The more the tides of ether and rays of sun

  On every side constrained into one mass

  The earth by lashing it again, again,

  Upon its outer edges (so that then,

  Being thus beat upon, ’twas all condensed

  About its proper centre), ever the more

  The salty sweat, from out its body squeezed,

  Augmented ocean and the fields of foam

  By seeping through its frame, and all the more

  Those many particles of heat and air

  Escaping, began to fly aloft, and form,

  By condensation there afar from earth,

  The high refulgent circuits of the heavens.

  The plains began to sink, and windy slopes

  Of the high mountains to increase; for rocks

  Could not subside, nor all the parts of ground

  Settle alike to one same level there.

  Thus, then, the massy weight of earth stood firm

  With now concreted body, when (as ‘twere)

  All of the slime of the world, heavy and gross,

  Had run together and settled at the bottom,

  Like lees or bilge. Then ocean, then the air,

  Then ether herself, the fraught-with-fire, were all

  Left with their liquid bodies pure and free,

  And each more lighter than the next below;

  And ether, most light and liquid of the three,

  Floats on above the long aerial winds,

  Nor with the brawling of the winds of air

  Mingles its liquid body. It doth leave

  All there — those under-realms below her heights —

  There to be overset in whirlwinds wild, —

  Doth leave all there to brawl in wayward gusts,

  Whilst, gliding with a fixed impulse still,

  Itself it bears its fires along. For, lo,

  That ether can flow thus steadily on, on,

  With one unaltered urge, the Pontus proves —

  That sea which floweth forth with fixed tides,

  Keeping one onward tenor as it glides.

  And that the earth may there abide at rest

  In the mid-region of the world, it needs

  Must vanish bit by bit in weight and lessen,

  And have another substance underneath,

  Conjoined to it from its earliest age

  In linked unison with the vasty world’s

  Realms of the air in which it roots and lives.

  On this account, the earth is not a load,

  Nor presses down on winds of air beneath;

  Even as unto a man his members be

  Without all weight — the head is not a load

  Unto the neck; nor do we feel the whole

  Weight of the body to centre in the feet.

  But whatso weights come on us from without,

  Weights laid upon us, these harass and chafe,

  Though often far lighter. For to such degree

  It matters always what the innate powers

  Of any given thing may be. The earth

  Was, then, no alien substance fetched amain,

  And from no alien firmament cast down

  On alien air; but was conceived, like air,

  In the first origin of this the world,

  As a fixed portion of the same, as now

  Our members are seen to be a part of us.

  Besides, the earth, when of a sudden shook

  By the big thunder, doth with her motion shake

  All that’s above her — which she ne’er could do

  By any means, were earth not bounden fas
t

  Unto the great world’s realms of air and sky:

  For they cohere together with common roots,

  Conjoined both, even from their earliest age,

  In linked unison. Aye, seest thou not

  That this most subtle energy of soul

  Supports our body, though so heavy a weight, —

  Because, indeed, ’tis with it so conjoined

  In linked unison? What power, in sum,

  Can raise with agile leap our body aloft,

  Save energy of mind which steers the limbs?

  Now seest thou not how powerful may be

  A subtle nature, when conjoined it is

  With heavy body, as air is with the earth

  Conjoined, and energy of mind with us?

  Now let us sing what makes the stars to move.

  In first place, if the mighty sphere of heaven

  Revolveth round, then needs we must aver

  That on the upper and the under pole

  Presses a certain air, and from without

  Confines them and encloseth at each end;

  And that, moreover, another air above

  Streams on athwart the top of the sphere and tends

  In same direction as are rolled along

  The glittering stars of the eternal world;

  Or that another still streams on below

  To whirl the sphere from under up and on

  In opposite direction — as we see

  The rivers turn the wheels and water-scoops.

  It may be also that the heavens do all

  Remain at rest, whilst yet are borne along

  The lucid constellations; either because

  Swift tides of ether are by sky enclosed,

  And whirl around, seeking a passage out,

  And everywhere make roll the starry fires

  Through the Summanian regions of the sky;

  Or else because some air, streaming along

  From an eternal quarter off beyond,

  Whileth the driven fires, or, then, because

  The fires themselves have power to creep along,

  Going wherever their food invites and calls,

  And feeding their flaming bodies everywhere

  Throughout the sky. Yet which of these is cause

  In this our world ’tis hard to say for sure;

  But what can be throughout the universe,

  In divers worlds on divers plan create,

  This only do I show, and follow on

  To assign unto the motions of the stars

  Even several causes which ’tis possible

  Exist throughout the universal All;

  Of which yet one must be the cause even here

  Which maketh motion for our constellations.

  Yet to decide which one of them it be

  Is not the least the business of a man